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Arcane (Unit Class)
Arcane units are mages and wizards, able to cast spells of their particular sphere of magic. An apprentice wizard is called an Adept. When he has reached level 4, he may be promoted to a full fledged Mage. At level 6, the Mage may be promoted to the higher grade, Archmage. Progression: Adept --> Mage --> Archmage (or Lich) Adepts Fantasy lore teach us that low level mages are quite useless. In FFH it is the opposite. The simple, cheap and easily avaialbe Adepts offer a wide range of precious support spells. It happens, on huge maps with enormous stack of doom of 200 units, to consider that Archmages are almost influential with theirs ridicously low numbers, while Adepts and support spells will be more important the larger your stack become. The short version is this: you want to have at least one guy with Enchantment I and Body I. "Enchanted blade" gives every unit in the stack an additional 20% Strength. Other magic spheres with a big "bang for your buck" include Shadow (immunity to First Strikes and the ability to ignore building defenses at Shadow II), Body (Haste = 1 extra movement for the entire stack), Chaos (1 Extra First Strike for the entire stack) and Metamagic (summons a magical eye to scout the map, just like airplanes in vanilla civ). Mages Mages have a composite range of spells, some great for attack, some to support. Archmages Archmages offers normally a powerful temporary summon with some Mana affinity. Fire offers Fire Elementhal with Fire Affinity. Water, Air, Sun, Earth, Death, Metamagic, Shadow offers similar summons, each with peculiarity: Water Elementhal split in two if he loses, Sun has a powerful +2 Affinity, Metamagic Elementhal has affinity to any Mana. The other Spheres of Magic offers very particular effects, always powerful but of limited use in battle. Nature III in example will Vitalize terrain, Enchantment III offers ability to twincast, Wither damages all living units within 1 tile, Life III resurrects the civs hero, and Mind III dominates the strongest hostile unit in adjacent tile, but loses the promotion if fail. Differences with Disciple line The arcane line of units have some crucial differences with their clerical counterpart, the Disciple line. Each disciple is strongly tied to the his Religion. A Mage on the countrary may learn any Sphere he choses: he may specialize in a single sector, or learingn every type of magic he encounter. A specialized firemage, in example, will learn all the Fire promotions, all the Combat promotion, and Illusions An Illusionist mage is able to summons Illusions, creature are not real unable to kill anyone and to sustain real damage. To be more precise, every single summons of an Illusionist will have the Illusion promotion. These summons will combat as normal, and will disappear if defeated. But if they win a combat they will not really kill their foe, leaving him at 10% health, but alive. After each single combat the illusion will be fully healed, perfectly fresh, also if he suffers different attacks in the same trun. On attack, this may pose a serious problem if you do not have other assistance unit on standby, or if the defender has a large stack where wounded units may rest protected. But it is also a great opportunity to help weaker units to gain experience. In example, a group of Adepts may start following a master illusionist, and every time an almost dead enemy lies nearby, an Adept may give the cup-de-grace, rapidly growing to Mage. On defense a summoned illusion unit is incredibly powerful. A single Fire Elemental summon, having the Illusion promotion, may defeat a stack of 50 sketelon, because it is fully healed after each combat. Gibbon Goetia is the most famous illusionist, but he is tied to the non-relgion, Council of Esus. Still he is so powerful that some prefer to use this religion only to use Gibbon. Svartalfar elves are a people of Assasins and Illusionists. All their mages and Archmages are specialist Illusionists, as their hero Alazkan, that equip a magical shield, the Back Mirror, that enables to summon an illusionary copy of himself each turn(casting Mirror), giving a bit of arcane illusionist magic to any unit that equip it. The counter to Illusions is the Perfect Sight promotion that grants 50% aganist illusions, but is fairly rare: you need to promote 3 times a recon unit on the Sight line. The Priest of Empyrean religion, called Vicars, have the powerful Revelation spells that directly destroys hostile illusions. It is the definitive anti-Esus spell as it also removes Hidden Nationality, Hidden and invisible from hostile units within 3 tiles. But you have to notice that summoned illusions that attack in the same turn as they appear, like Wraith, Revelation will be useless. Note that Illusionist (Unit) is the Svartalfar susstiute for Mage, while Illusionist (Promotion) is the ability to summon Illusions, and Illusion is the Promotion of a unit summoned by an Illusionist or by casting Mirror. List of Arcane units * Adept ::* Imp * Archmage ::* Eater of Dreams * Lich * Mage ::* Illusionist ::* Puppeteer ::* Wizard * Mobius Witch